08 Monday Aug 2016
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As we get kids ready to go back to school, you may be realizing your 11/12 year old may be due for vaccines before going to school. The following article tells you what your child will need and why we highly encourage you to get your pre-teen vaccinated.
31 Sunday Jul 2016
Posted in medication, Uncategorized, vaccine
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Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) has recently recommended to not use Flumist this year. This statement comes after the poor outcomes of the immunization over the last 3 seasons. Many people prefer this due to ease and painless administration for their children, but we highly encourage getting the injection this year. Our office will not be carrying the Flumist this year in accordance with ACIP recommendation. Please don’t let this prevent you from getting immunized!!
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/865535
|Hi. My name is Paul Offit. I’m talking to you from the Vaccine Education Center, at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
I want to talk about something that happened last Wednesday, June 22, 2016, at the meeting of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) when they made the following recommendation
[Editor’s note: The following is from a statement prepared by the ACIP on June 22]:
In light of the evidence for poor effectiveness of LAIV—the live attenuated influenza vaccine, otherwise known as FluMist—in the United States over the last three influenza seasons, for the upcoming 2016-2017 season, the ACIP makes the interim recommendation that FluMist should not be used.
How did we get here? Years ago, we preferred FluMist over the inactivated influenza vaccine, for a few reasons: (1) It worked better than the inactivated vaccine; (2) In children, it is easier to give and is often preferred; (3) It reproduces itself at the nasal mucosal surface and induces local immunity, which in theory should allow the recipient who is exposed to the natural or wild-type influenza virus to shed less virus and therefore be less contagious.
Unfortunately, over the past few years, FluMist has underperformed compared with the inactivated vaccine, reaching a new low last year when the efficacy was estimated to be 3%, a rate that was indistinguishable from placebo. Why did this happen? It is hard to know, but when you give an inactivated vaccine with 15 µg of hemagglutinin per strain into a muscle, the antigen is taken up by local lymph nodes, processed, and presented to the immune system. When you give the FluMist vaccine, you are giving live, attenuated viruses that contain nanograms, rather than micrograms, of hemagglutinin. To get an adequate immune response, those viruses need to replicate.
By definition, these viruses are not replicating well, because either prior immunity or a dominant strain is affecting their capacity to replicate. Switching from the trivalent FluMist to the quadrivalent FluMist has not been effective over the past few years, perhaps because one of the added B strains caused the other vaccine viruses to reproduce less efficiently.
These are answerable questions. For example, we can look at the shedding of these viruses. That was the case with the oral polio vaccine. In that vaccine, the type 2 virus was actually contained in larger quantities because the other two viruses were able to replicate more efficiently on the intestinal mucosal surface. This question should be answered because FluMist was an excellent vaccine and hopefully it can be redeemed.
Medscape Infectious Diseases © 2016 WebMD, LLC
Any views expressed above are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of WebMD or Medscape.
Cite this article: The Rise and Fall of FluMist–Can the Nasal Spray Flu Vaccine Be Redeemed? Medscape. Jul 01, 2016.
https://static.cmptch.com/v/lib/mng.html?1469573891#´#Ũ#Ũ
25 Thursday Feb 2016
New study put out by CDC shows promising results!!!
30 Wednesday Sep 2015
Posted in vaccine
Yes, it is THAT time of year again!! The dreaded flu. We have already seen a few cases of flu in the last couple of weeks! Yikes-its early!! Please, please consider getting your flu vaccine this year. The following article gives helpful info/tips that you should consider when deciding if you should do your flu vaccine. Please read!!!
09 Sunday Aug 2015
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Here’s an interesting article on vaccines!
21 Thursday May 2015
Posted in vaccine
As health care providers, we try to push the importance of vaccination. There are so many diseases that can be deadly, why would you not want to give your child every protection possible? This is a very controversial topic for many, but today I just want to focus on one that is not required but is extremely beneficial to teens. The HPV vaccine has been out long enough now, we are starting to see the many benefits of this vaccine, but there are so many parents that choose not to do this vaccine for their children.
What is HPV? It is a virus transmitted through skin to skin contact. There are over 150 variations of this virus that are classified into 40 types many of which can cause genital warts, cervical cancer, anal cancer, penile cancer, vaginal cancer, vulvar cancer, and oropharyngeal cancer. Currently we have vaccines that protect up to 9 strains.
http://www.cdc.gov/hpv/cancer.html
Approximately 79 million Americans are currently infected with HPV.
About 14 million people become newly infected each year.
About half (49%) of these new infections will be among people ages 15-24.
HPV is so common that nearly all sexually-active men and women will get at least one type of HPV at some point in their lives.
http://shotofprevention.com/2013/08/20/why-some-parents-are-refusing-hpv-vaccine-for-their-children/
One of the most common responses is, “my child is not sexually active.” I certainly hope this is not true at age 11, although it has happened. The purpose of the vaccine being given at an early age is to get it in the system and building an immune response before the child is ever sexually active. According to American Cancer Society, statistics show approximately half of the girls in high school have had vaginal sex.
What most parents do not realize is that Oral-genital and hand-genital transmission of some genital HPV types is possible so vaginal sex is not necessary to transmit.
Here are more specific numbers that may surprise you as it did me. 7% of kids aged 12 to 13 have had sex, 28% by age 15, one-third by age 16, 48% by age 17, 61% by age 18 and 71% by age 19. More than 25% of teens have had more than one partner and 11% of high school students have had sexual intercourse with four or more partners.
http://shotofprevention.com/2013/08/20/why-some-parents-are-refusing-hpv-vaccine-for-their-children/
Another common response is “I don’t want my child to think they have permission to have sex.” Believe it or not, actual research has been done indicating that HPV vaccination has had no notable difference in the markers of sexual activity.
http://www.cdc.gov/hpv/cancer.html
Adolescents have their last set of vaccines at 11, so it works out well to start HPV at this time. We may not get these adolescents back in the office to start the vaccine later. Also the body illicits a greater immune response and produces higher antibody levels when given at this age.
If asked the question, “ Would you give your child a vaccine if you new it would prevent cancer?” I can tell you my answer would wholeheartedly be YES!!! That is exactly what this vaccine is doing. Too many are blinded because HPV falls under the umbrella of an STD. HPV strains 16 and 18 (the most popular HPV strains) are responsible for about 70% of cervical cancers and 90% of genital warts. The risk of cervical dysplasia which leads to cancer reduces the risk by 44%. That’s a pretty significant number to me!
For those that are concerned about the safety of the vaccine, there are multiple studies that have been done that show it is well tested and extremely safe.
29 Sunday Mar 2015
